iYogi Re-Defines Technical Support With Proactive Approach

Remote managed services are gaining a lot of attraction these days. Companies are looking to outsource the maintenance and monitoring of their IT infrastructure to a third party to improve efficiency and save costs. BizTech2.com caught up with Uday Challu, founding partner and CEO, iYogi, to see what the company has to offer in this space.
As far as Enterprise and SME customers are concerned, which verticals are you focusing on?
Our focus will mostly be on small companies with around five to 100 users and also firms that have multiple small branch offices like travel agencies, retail stores etc.
What kind of support services do you provide to your customers? What is the Green PC service?
iYogi provides the next generation of remote computer support services for consumers and businesses. For consumers, our live 24/7 support extends to technologies we use everyday, including hardware, software applications, devices, peripherals and networking equipment. iYogi also offers a full range of business IT solutions including managed monitoring, managed services, set-up and installation services, and incident-based services.
Green PC Service
With the current state of the global climate and increasing dependency on the computer, iYogi helps PC users reduce their carbon footprint and save money at the same time. iYogi’s Green PC service is the first in the independent computer support industry to offer customers a way to save money, conserve energy and protect the environment by optimising their PC’s efficiency. Consumers and businesses can save up to $200 per year, per desktop, in energy costs with iYogi’s Green PC application. This green application makes the computer environmentally friendly by reducing power consumption by almost 50 percent.
Our Green PC dashboard helps customise power settings and calculate power savings in kWh (kilowatt hour). The Green PC dashboard also gives a status on the reduction of CO2 and how responsible usage will benefit the environment by saving trees. A customised service that increases the energy efficiency of computers, undertakes the below-mentioned three primary initiatives:
- Computer assessment, analysing settings and PC energy use- Customised efficiency planning geared specifically to the individual’s usage patterns- Implementing setting changes to maximise the computer’s energy use
What are the technologies that allow you to offer 24/7 support and ensure there is no downtime at the client site?

We have invested significantly in developing a comprehensive monitoring and management tools stack. This enables us to manage and monitor all devices in the office network as well as for branch offices and mobile users. Our tools continuously monitor the customer’s network and notify our NOC (Network Operations Centre) in case of problems. Based on the set of events, tickets are automatically generated and escalated to corresponding teams. Over and above our proactive approach, the customer always has an option to call our 24X7 support line for issues that are not identified via the monitoring tools.
Please throw some light on your proprietary iMantra technology.
iMantra is a CRM system, which is tailor-made to suit the emerging business needs at iYogi. It allows for the formation of individualised customer relationships with the aim of providing personalised services to each subscriber. This tool is built on the latest java technology with a layered architecture that makes it scalable and secure. This architecture provides a seamless workflow and independent channels for various business needs: sales, support, quality and customer service. The entire system can be exposed in the form of secure APIs and Web services, which makes it a re-usable entity.
Your business model is similar to BPOs in India providing technical support to offshore customers. What unique values do you bring to this ecosystem that would help a potential client choose you over a competitor?
iYogi’s business model is different from traditional BPOs. Some key factors that differentiate iYogi include:

- Direct-to-consumer and -small business: iYogi delivers technical support services directly to consumers and small businesses and is a global technical support brand based out of India. Unlike traditional BPOs in India, iYogi does not provide any private label support and/ or work on behalf of large OEMs or software publishers.
- Optimised Processes: iYogi has developed proprietary processes for consistently delivering on a resolution rate of 87 percent, which is among the highest published benchmarks in the support industry, where averages hover in the range of 50 percent.

- Comprehensive technology platform: iYogi’s global delivery platform, iMantra, gets smarter with every customer interaction. It documents every problem, the solution and relevant hardware and software aspects, while capturing each customer’s demographic information and creating a behavioural profile. All of this information is at the fingertips of iYogi’s Global Tech Experts. This set-up combines a knowledge base with a comprehensive set of tools and technology expertise. iYogi offers a range of tools that complement its remote support services for helping customers maintain technology at peak performance levels. iYogi’s products include iYogi Smart PC Scan, iYogi Support Dock, iYogi Green PC and iYogi PC Optimisation.

How do you plan to move up the value chain in the times to come?
The growing use and penetration of the Internet and new Web-based applications has consequently opened the door to threats and vulnerabilities, which affect the system performance and ultimately lead to degrading performance. If the threats are diagnosed early on, the impact on efficiency can be minimised considerably. Currently, a user only realizes that he needs technical support once the damage has occurred and reactive methods of support are used to recover from the loss.

At iYogi, we are developing our capabilities to not only provide support when demanded, but to also monitor, pre-empt and fix threats before they can cause any damage to the computer. This will be possible only by combining technology with processes that are capable of re-defining the way technical support is delivered today.

What is your India strategy?
Technically, we are capable of servicing any geography including India. At this stage, we are looking for the right kind of partners to find access to potential customers and provide them a consolidated, 360-degree solution and services for issues relating to hardware, software, network etc. We aim to launch our India services in the coming six to eight months. Our services will offer clients a one-stop solution for all their business needs.

Red Herring Awards 2008 iYogi For Asia America 100

Award Recognizes the 100 “Most Promising” Asian Companies Driving the Future of Technology

Silicon Valley, CA, Dec 9th, 2008— Red Herring today announced that iYogi is a winner of the Red Herring 100 Award, a selection of the 100 most innovative private technology companies based in Asia.

IYogi delivers technical support services directly to consumers and small businesses and is the first, global, technical support brand based out of India with more than 50,000 customers. The company offers consumers an unlimited, annual subscription service for $119.99 per desktop that includes support for a wide range of technologies, including PC hardware, Microsoft Products Support, Windows Operating systems, Computer Support, Software applications, MP3 players, Networking devices, Digital camera, Printers and scanners etc.

The Red Herring editorial board diligently surveyed the entrepreneurial scene throughout Asia and identified the top 100 out of more than 1,000 closely evaluated companies that are leading the next wave of innovation.

“Our winners and Finalists demonstrate that Asia is increasingly becoming a leader in innovation, contrary to common stereotypes", said Joel Dreyfuss, editor-in-chief of Red Herring. " It was tough to choose just the top 100 finalists from such a large list of excellent contenders, and we are very happy with the quality of the companies we selected as finalists."

“We believe consumers and small business owners should have low-cost access to the highest quality support available on the planet", said Uday Challu, CEO of iYogi. “We are thrilled that our innovative approach to solving everyday technology problems for consumers and our managed services for small businesses has been recognized by Red Herring’s keen-eyed leadership. We are continuously innovating in adding new services that includes PC recovery, anti-virus, anti-spyware, data back-up and PC optimization in providing the best tech support experience for our customers”, adds Uday.

The 100 winning companies have been announced at the Red Herring Asia event in Hong Kong. The CEOs of the winning start ups presented their innovative ideas and technologies to an audience of leading entrepreneurs, financiers, and corporate strategists at the event at the Hong Kong, JW Marriott Hotel earlier this week.

About iYogi

iYogi is the first direct-to-consumer and small business technical support service from India. Providing an annual unlimited subscription to technical support, iYogi now boasts of more than 50,000 customers. The company employs 600 professionals servicing customers in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and fast expanding to 12 new geographies across the globe. iYogi’s resolution rate of 87 percent and customer satisfaction rate of 93 percent are amongst the highest published benchmarks in the industry. For further information, please visit www.iyogi.net.

iYogi Contact

iYogi Contact

Vishal Dhar

President Marketing, iYogi Inc.

Phone: 212 229 0901

Email: vishal@iyogi.net

How to use ANOVA tools in Excel

Many functions require the calculation of the sum of squared deviations about a mean. To do this accurately, Microsoft Office Excel 2003 and later versions of Excel use a two-pass procedure that finds the mean on the first pass, and then calculates squared deviations about the mean on the second pass.

In precise arithmetic, the same result occurs in earlier versions of Excel that use the "calculator formula." This formula is so named because it was in widespread use when statisticians used calculators instead of computers. With the calculator formula, earlier versions of Excel sum the squares of the observations, and then subtract from this total the following quantity:

((sum of observations)^2) / number of observations

This calculation occurs in a single pass through the data.

In finite precision arithmetic, the calculator formula is subject to roundoff errors in extreme cases. Excel 2002 and earlier versions of Excel use the calculator formula for most functions that require a sum of squared deviations about a mean (such as VAR, STDEV, SLOPE, and PEARSON). However, these versions of Excel also use the more numerically robust two-pass procedure for the CORREL, COVAR, and DEVSQ functions.

Experts in statistical computing recommend that you do not use the calculator formula. The calculator formula is presented as "how not to do it" in texts about statistical computing. Unfortunately, all three of the Analysis ToolPak (ATP) ANOVA tools make widespread use of the calculator formula or an equivalent single-pass approach in Excel 2002 and in earlier versions of Excel.

Excel 2003 and later versions of Excel use the two-pass procedure for all three ATP ANOVA models. This article discusses the following computational improvements in ATP's three ANOVA models:
• Single Factor
• Two-Factor with Replication
• Two-Factor without Replication

Single Factor
A simple example with data is as follows.
ANOVA 1 BASIC MODEL:
1 2 3
2 4 4
3 6 5
4 8 6
5 --7
6 --8
Anova: Single Factor

SUMMARY
Groups Count Sum Average Variance
Column 1 6 ---21 --- 3.5 ----- 3.5
Column 2 4 --- 20 --- 5 ------- 6.666667
Column 3 6 --- 33 --- 5.5 ----- 3.5


ANOVA
Source of Variation SS df MS ----F --------P-value F crit
Between Groups 12.75 2 6.375 1.506818 0.257897 3.805567
Within Groups 55 13 4.230769

Total 67.75 15
Excel 2002 and earlier versions of Excel use the following pseudocode to calculate the sums of squares:

GrandSum = 0;
GrandSumOfSqs = 0;
GrandSampleMeanSqrd = 0;
GrandMeanSqrd = 0;
GrandSampleSize = 0;

For s = 1 to Number_of_Samples do
GrandSum = GrandSum + sum of observations in s-th sample;
GrandSumOfSqs = GrandSumOfSqs + sum of squared observations in s-th sample;
GrandSampleMeanSqrd = GrandSampleMeanSqrd +
(sum of observations in s-th sample^2)/size of s-th sample;
GrandSampleSize = GrandSampleSize + size of s-th sample
Endfor;

GrandMeanSqrd = (GrandSum^2) / GrandSampleSize;

TotalSS = GrandSumOfSqs – GrandMeanSqrd;
BetweenGroupsSS = GrandSampleMeanSqrd – GrandMeanSqrd;
WithinGroupsSS = GrandSumOfSqs – GrandSampleMeanSqrd;

This approach is essentially the calculator formula. This approach computes the sums of squares of observations, and then subtracts a quantity from them, just as VAR computes the sum of squares of the observations, and then subtracts sum of observations^2/sample size. Similar pseudocode for the model 2 and model 3 has been omitted.

Again, for model 2 and model 3, sums of squares are calculated and a quantity is subtracted from the sum of squares as in the calculator formula. Unfortunately, basic statistics texts frequently suggest approaches for ANOVA such as the one that is shown earlier in this article.

Excel 2003 and later versions of Excel use a different approach to calculate the various entries in the SS column of the ANOVA table. For illustration, this article assumes that the numeric data in the earlier example appear in cells A2:C7 with missing data in cells B6 and B7.
• Total SS is just DEVSQ applied to all the data, such as DEVSQ(A2:C7). DEVSQ works correctly even though data is missing.
• Between Groups SS is Total SS minus the sum of DEVSQ applied to each column, such as DEVSQ(A2:A7) + DEVSQ(B2:B7) + DEVSQ(C2:C7).
• Within Groups SS is Total SS minus Between Groups SS.

#VALUE error when you add text and values in Excel

In Microsoft Excel, when you perform a mathematical operation on cells that contain text and values, you may receive a #VALUE! error. In this post i will given some idea for Microsoft Excel Support to slove that type of problems.

Although some functions correctly evaluate cells and ignore text strings, if you add the cells by using arithmetic operators such as addition (+), subtraction (-), multiplication (*), or division (/), an error value may occur.

Do the following for Resolution

Instead of using an individual mathematical operator, use its equivalent worksheet function instead:
SUM (adds)
PRODUCT (multiplies)
QUOTIENT (divides)
For example, if you type the following information in cells A1:A7 of a worksheet

A1: 10
A2: text
A3: 20
A4: =A1+A2+A3
A5: =SUM(A1+A2+A3)
A6: =SUM(A1,A2,A3)
A7: =SUM(A1:A3)


the formulas in cells A4 and A5 return a #VALUE! error; however, cells A6 and A7 return the correct value of 30.

How to use startup folders in Excel

Folders that Excel uses at startup
If you install Excel in the default location, Excel opens files from the following paths:
• In Microsoft Office Excel 2003, the path is C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11\Xlstart

In Microsoft Office Excel 2007, the path is C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\Xlstart
• C:\Documents and Settings\User_name\Application Data\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART

In this path, User_name is your logon user name.
• The folder that is specified in the At startup, open all files in box

Note
To find the At startup, open all files in box in Excel 2003, click Options on the Tools menu, and then click the General tab.

To find the At startup, open all files in box in Excel 2007, click the Microsoft Office Button, click Excel Options, and then click Advanced. The At startup, open all files in box is under General.

Accepted file types during Excel startup

You typically use startup folders to load Excel templates and add-ins. You can also use startup folders to load workbooks. When you load the following types of files from a startup folder, the files have the important characteristics that are described in the following list.
Templates
If you save a workbook named Book.xlt, and then put it in a startup folder location, that workbook is the default workbook when you start Excel or open a new workbook.

To use additional templates, you must save them in the following folder:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates\1033
To use the templates in Excel 2003, follow these steps:
1. On the File menu, click New.
2. In the New Workbook task pane, click On my computer under Templates.
3. In the Templates dialog box, double-click the template for the type of workbook that you want to create on the Spreadsheet Solutions tab.

To use the templates in Excel 2007, follow these steps:
1. Click the Microsoft Office Button, and then click New.
2. Under Templates, click Installed Templates.
3. Under Installed Templates, click the template that you want, and then click Create.
Add-ins
Add-ins (.xla files) that you put in a startup folder do not typically appear when you start Excel. The add-ins are loaded in memory. The add-ins run any auto macros.

You can use these add-ins by whatever method the add-in provides (for example, a command on a menu or a button on a toolbar).
Workbooks
Workbooks (.xls files) that you put in a startup folder are loaded and appear when you start Excel, unless the workbook is saved in a hidden state.

New Field button is unavailable in Show Field dialog boxes in Outlook

When you use the Field Chooser or Show Fields options in Microsoft Outlook, the resulting dialog boxes may display the New Field button as dimmed (unavailable), or if available, when you click the New Field button, you may receive the following message:
You do not have permission to add a custom field to the folder. Any field you create will appear only in the current view.

To fix this Outlook problem we have to care on You can only create MAPI folder to which you have sufficient privileges.

How to Access Show Field Option

To access the Show Fields option, on the View menu, point to Current View, point to Customize Current View, and then click Fields.

Note In Outlook 2003, on the View menu, point to Arrange By, point to Current View, click Customize Current View, and then click Fields.

The New Field button is not available for one of the following reasons:

- The current folder is a file system folder. For example, if the folder banner shows that the active folder is My Documents, then the New Field button will be unavailable.

- You do not have sufficient permissions to the selected MAPI folder. If the current folder is a MAPI folder, such as a public folder, you must have sufficient permissions to that folder to allow the creation of fields. Have the folder owner ensure create permission is available to you for the active folder. The folder owner, or another user with sufficient permissions, can access the permission settings for the folder by right-clicking the folder in the Outlook Bar or Folder List, and then clicking Properties on the shortcut menu.

To validate that the New Field button is working properly, follow these steps:

1. Select the Inbox or another MAPI folder to which you know you have sufficient permissions.
2. Right-click a column header and click Field Chooser on the shortcut menu.
3. Confirm that the New Field button is available by clicking the button

Subscript characters are displayed incorrectly when you insert them in Excel 2003 or in Excel 2002

SYMPTOMS
When you insert subscript characters in Microsoft Office Excel 2003 or in Microsoft Excel 2002, the characters are displayed incorrectly. For example, an empty rectangle is displayed when you insert subscript one.

CAUSE
When you insert subscript characters, Excel 2003 and Excel 2002 use the Arial Unicode MS font if one of the following is not installed on the computer:
• An appropriate font, such as MS MIncho or MS Gothic
• Support files for the East Asian languages
The Arial Unicode MS font cannot resolve all characters correctly.

WORKAROUND
To work around this issue, use one of the following methods:

Method 1
Install the MS MIncho font or the MS Gothic font on the computer. To do this, follow these steps:
1. Click Start, click Run, type Fonts, and then click OK.
2. Click Install New Font in the File menu.
3. In the Add Fonts dialog box, locate the font file for the MS MIncho font or for the MS Gothic font, and then click OK.

Method 2
Install the East Asian languages support files. To do this, follow these steps:
1. Click Start, click Run, type Intl.cpl, and then click OK.
2. Click the Languages tab, click the Install files for East Asian languages check box, and then click OK.

APPLIES TO
• Microsoft Office Excel 2003
• Microsoft Excel 2002 Standard Edition


source spport.microsoft.com